Thursday, February 07, 2013

The Advantage to Living in Canada

I will miss the penny, I really will. And Canadians are sometimes too subservient to authority. But I have to say that one clear advantage to living in Canada is that reasonable societal changes like this one (and the metric system, and gay marriage, and the adoption of OHIP) are not routinely derailed by breathtakingly insane opposition that resorts to rhetoric like "lies from the pit of hell".

Pennies provide some kind of stabilization in the economy. As soon as they go, prices go up. This has been proven to be true in Europe, and in Sweden. Initially, European Union had 1 and 2 c coins. They are gone now. In Sweden, 1 krona is divided in 100 öre. But the öre coins were abolished a couple of years ago. Prices are still quoted as 427.95 kronor (or, rather, 427,95 kronor--they prefer comma in place of a period and period in place of comma) but are rounded up or down to the closest integer. Slowly, however, prices will increase and become equal to the ceiling function of the current price.

If you think that Canadians are subservient to authority, you have no idea what Swedes are like. They will do anything as long as the government says so. No questions asked, ever.

Canada has a decimal money system. So no update will be reasonable unless it removes the entire cents column (goodbye nickel and quarter, hello rarely-seen 50c piece) not just the cent coin, and not just for cash transactions.

Also, how reasonable is this new plastic currency? Received from the bank, the bills (hundreds, fifites, twenties) stick together seamlessly, and can be difficult to pry apart, so if you aren't careful, you can pay with two of the same bill, when you think you're using only one.